


The Uncharted Desert Isle

by duckiesinaline



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Desert Island, Desert Island Fic, Gen, Graves goes a bit strange, Lots of it, Wandless Magic, longer than a 3 hour tour, so much handwavy geological science, spite carries him through, the title came from Gilligan's Island, unexpectedly bamf!Percival Graves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 13:49:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12411513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckiesinaline/pseuds/duckiesinaline
Summary: The first time he woke and took full stock of his new circumstance, Graves spent the rest of the day wondering if he should just drown himself out of spite. He assumed Grindelwald had wanted to keep him alive - which was why he was still breathing - and presumably had some further use for him - which was why he was squirreled away on some undiscovered equatorial island, like a dragot in a bank. Graves could very well ruin any further plans Grindelwald had for him by simply removing himself from them permanently.After three days of coconut water and shellfish and crab, though, he decided his spite had grown too big to be satisfied with just ruining some possibly minor plotline. He wanted to personally be there at the dark wizard’s downfall and spit in the man’s mismatched eyes.





	The Uncharted Desert Isle

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuses for this. I started the evening intending to just do a 3 paragraph blurb 'cause the idea just sounded so intriguing, and then 4 hours later, I suddenly had 2700+ words written and edited.
> 
> My only defense is go [look at the amazing arts by qed221b](http://qed221b.tumblr.com/post/166517225332/funkzpiel-and-i-were-joking-around-the-other-day) that started it all and this was the premise that came with it:
> 
>  
> 
> _@funkzpiel and I were joking around the other day about Grindelwald dumping Graves on a tropical island while he was running about New York trying to find the Obscurial._
> 
>  
> 
> _Of course this lead to a Percival with freckles and sunkissed hair who is absolutely livid about getting stranded in the middle of the ocean, and the fact that nobody seems to appreciate the ‘no, it was not a damn vacation!’._

The vaguely crescent-shaped island took three hours to circumnavigate on foot. It might have taken only two, but a third of its coastline was still a craggy black mass of frozen lava. New enough in geological time that nothing but some sort of stubbly ocean moss had managed to coat them in a slimy carpet; old enough that there wasn’t even residual heat radiating from beneath the surface. It had been hard going without turning an ankle, and the sharp-as-glass edges had chewed up the soles of his shoes and sliced one palm open when he had stumbled. There was only a great bowl of obsidian cinders - also cooled, now - to tell of what the source had once been.

The beaches were a fine, powdery white sand, silky against his fingers and toes. Vegetation was comprised mostly of a waist-high, crackly scrub that tended to congregate to one side of the cinder cone, punctuated by stands of stunted-looking palms. To the east, the island sloped gently into the sea, shallows of a pure, almost unnatural aqua and teal shading gently into the deeper blue of the sky. To the west, the ocean plunged into fathomless indigos and ultramarines, as intimidating in their depths as looking down from atop the Woolworth building.

It was the most sun and sky and water and fresh air as Graves had ever experienced since Ilvermorny. Perhaps even before then, particularly where the sun was concerned. It was peaceful, idyllic, _nourishing,_ as some might say, for the heart and the soul.

In less than a week, he was reduced to screaming obscenities at the wide expanses of blue, blue, blue.

* * *

The first time he woke and took full stock of his new circumstance, Graves spent the rest of the day wondering if he should just drown himself out of spite. He assumed Grindelwald had wanted to keep him alive - which was why he was still breathing - and presumably had some further use for him - which was why he was squirreled away on some undiscovered equatorial island, like a dragot in a bank. Graves could very well ruin any further plans Grindelwald had for him by simply removing himself from them permanently.

After three days of coconut water and shellfish and crab, though, he decided his spite had grown too big to be satisfied with just ruining some possibly minor plotline. He wanted to personally be there at the dark wizard’s downfall and spit in the man’s mismatched eyes.

* * *

Graves had always been very good with wandless magic. Now he was forced to be _excellent._

He couldn’t quite transfigure his New England attire to something more appropriate for the tropics, but magic did keep what bits he used from simply wearing down into rags.

Fire had been relatively easy to manage, with plenty of dry scrub at hand. Warmth was not an issue - quite the opposite, in the daytime - but he had never been a fan of the raw oysters that was such the rage in Boston, and now he was assured relatively civilized meals from whatever he harvested.

He burned and his skin peeled, and it might have seemed only a minor irritant, until he couldn’t sleep for the fever. He had feared that using magical healing would keep him pale and he would simply continue to burn with each new day, but when he was finally forced to do something about it, he was gratified to discover that the soothed skin was now ever-so-slightly darker than before. His Irish heritage meant he would never truly tan, but eventually, freckles dotted the crests of his shoulders and what he could glimpse of his collarbones. He ceased to need the healing charms anymore.

He ran out of coconuts by the fifth day. He couldn’t quite manage the spell to multiply them without a wand, but he was eventually able to invoke a small spring at unpredictable intervals. Enough fresh water spurted up each time for him to capture in the coconut hulls that he was reasonably certain he would not die from that particular privation.

The ocean was an obvious bounty of fish, but he wasn’t too sanguine about his chances of creating a wandless bubble head charm that could be maintained through the rigors of swimming and hunting fish in the sea. So, other than the slower crustaceans along the shoreline, he looked first to the vegetation and the sky.

There were birds on the island - everything from tiny, drab things chirping noisily at sunrise in the brush, to elegant, soaring shadows that would drift silently by overhead. It took him a week before he figured out how to stun them en masse where he could collect them; at least, enough to get more than just a few mouthfuls.

It was only a few days before they learned to avoid him on sight.

Frustrated, he finally took to the sea, and discovered to his chagrin that it was even easier to harvest from the waters than the air. The dense medium seemed to condense or magnify whatever force he sent through it, so that a single Stunner or wave of concussion would send dozens of fish twitching or floating belly-up to the surface. In fact, his biggest quandary after that was figuring out which were safe to consume, recalling some distant lesson from his youth ranging in the wilds around Ilvermorny about brightly patterned animals and poisons.

He was reminded of the sea’s dangers when his fourth fishing trip attracted another predator to the same hunting grounds. He sliced cheek and shoulder open on the nearby coral when he panicked, but managed to send a Stunner that glanced off the shark’s nose, sending it whipping away into the churned waters.

His hands were shaking as he staggered up well beyond the waterline, barely registering the salt-sting in his face and his arm as the sleek torpedo shape and its flat eyes loomed large in his mind. He didn’t enter the water again for an entire week.

* * *

The stars were brighter and more numerous than he ever recalled seeing, and he regretted not paying more attention to his astronomical - Merlin and Morgana, even his _astrological_ \- classes. Perhaps if he knew where he was, which direction he should go, he could simply ... strike out into the ocean. Even if he was too far to apparate to some major land mass, if he simply went out far enough, maybe he could find _something_. The entire world’s major landmasses have been mapped and the no-majs now crossed the Atlantic regularly in four-and-a-half days. How far can he really be from anything?

* * *

Very far.

He learned how to focus the force he conjured down to nearly a needle-point. When particularly bored or restless, he would practice taking out individual birds, shooting them from twig or sky, until he rarely missed.

He learned how to harness the repelling force of these blasts, rather than simply allowing the recoil to disperse, and used it to propel himself through the water. He wasn’t quite as acrobatic as the dolphins that occasionally visited, but it was enough to play tag with them, and he no longer feared to be caught by sharks that were attracted by his hunting again.

He practiced until he was able to conjure fresh water at will. He felled a grove of palm trees and peeled them smooth with surgical applications of Diffindo. He stared out at the horizon, eyes narrowed against the familiar glare of sand and sun and water, and watched the most recent flock of birds he had purposely flustered fly off in a particular direction.

On his make-shift raft loaded with dried fish and bird meat and a vessel to drink from, he set out to follow them.

There was an island, even smaller, that they touched down on. When he scattered them again, and with a word and a wave of his hand, ushered them in the opposite direction from the island he had just come from, they continued on and he followed yet again.

There were a chain of islands, six atolls of varying sizes and shapes.

He ventured out past the last one by three days before, finishing nearly the last of his food supply, he was forced to turn back around.

* * *

His hair had grown long enough to brush his ears. The first time, he barely registered the tickling sensation, and had pushed it back without thinking. The second time, he paused with his fingers tangled in salt-crusted locks, and felt slow panic leach into his veins like venom.

How long had it been? How much longer would he be here? What had Grindelwald been doing all this time?

* * *

Now that he knew of the other islands, he was able to Apparate from one to the next, like skipping stones. On the last atoll, barely more than an outcrop rearing out of the waves, he stared out over the blank ocean beyond, wondering if he had the courage to simply jump, to leap out across the unknown miles between him and New York, and trust Luck or Fate to give him the strength to arrive mostly in one piece at the other end.

What would be the worst case scenario? If he were on some island in the Asian or Australian continent? He didn’t know enough about the local flora and fauna to tell if he were there or in the Caribbean.

He Apparated back to his home island, and stared fixedly at his palm-wood raft.

* * *

Destination. Determination. Deliberation.

It was harder, when the horizon was an unending line of soft blues. It was harder, while hanging onto a makeshift satchel containing a shrunken raft and supplies and treading water. But he had learned that, when he sent something ahead to focus on, didn’t let his eyes blur with the infinite _sameness_ of it all, that he could _send_ himself forward, faster than he could propel himself with raft and pure power.

He would fling a white shell-crusted coconut hull with his magic as far as he could still see it, bobbing on the ocean waves, and then Apparate himself to it.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Until he had barely enough energy to return the raft to its normal size, and drag himself atop it to swallow a few leathery bites of dried fish and sleep.

And then, when he woke, he would repeat it all again.

* * *

When he determined he had only two days’ left of supplies even with strict rationing, he conjured a bubble head charm and swam down, as far as he dared.

When he realized he could barely see his hands in front of him, he swallowed down the pressure in his ears and stopped, suspended in infinite twilight.

All around him was simply empty shadow. Above him, there was just a dim smudge of light. There were no fish; nothing else living that he could see. He was suddenly struck by the vastness of the water around him, of how alien this world was to a land-bound creature like him, of how the passive cold and all-encompassing pressure numbed his body until he had to churn the water to remind himself he even still possessed one.

His breath was fast and shallow within the bubble charm and his ears hurt when he clawed his way back to the surface.

* * *

He tried again, when he had only a few bites left. This time, he waited until the sun was brightest, and he made sure he could see the small square of his raft always in the corner of his vision.

In the deep ocean, things had room to grow. A school skimmed past with fish larger than him, their unblinking eyes as big as his fist. When he killed one, the rest darted off in a storm of silver flashes, as swift and agile as gazelles despite their size.

* * *

He nearly Apparated right past the first sign of civilization, so focused had he become in his routine.

It was a no-maj fishing boat. Perhaps near South America, or Spain, with their sun-baked skin and their rapid Spanish patter. He hurriedly re-expanded the raft, let them come up to him and pull him aboard, and magically smoothed over whatever confusion anyone may have had if they had glimpsed his sleight-of-hand with the raft.

There was no relief yet. Just the vague realization that he had reached a turning point. He found himself glad that he didn’t understand their language, and he was not obligated to respond in turn. He cringed from their well-meaning pats and grasps, and welcomed the isolation of the head when he was given a spare set of clothes to change into.

* * *

In the mirror, there was someone with dark eyes habitually narrowed against the sun’s glare, crow’s feet at the corners, freckles scattered beneath. The old coral scrape had healed into a track of pale lines cutting across the shelf of a cheek, and dark hair now hung in sheafs of black and warm umber with a steel glint of silver beneath.

He stared until clunking footsteps passing outside made him startle. He looked at the simple necessities the fishermen had loaned him - a razor, scissors, soap - and looked back in the mirror before he called power to his fingertips and began to drag it across his face, shearing off the stubble crowding his jaw.

* * *

It had been a week since Grindelwald was arrested. He had laughed in their faces when they had asked where the real Percival Graves was. They had torn through Graves’ office and his home, but no recognizable clues had been found.

The president had reluctantly decreed that the search would be called off if no progress had been made by the end of the month.

Five days from their self-imposed deadline, while MACUSA’s public offices were winding down, a man stepped into the lobby.

Heads turned, because he was unfashionably and unseasonably dressed in a loose linen shirt, ragged trousers crusted white by salt, and sandals. He was lean, body pared down to whipcord muscle, hair ragged, gaze unnervingly direct. He looked like he had stepped straight from the sun-drenched isles of the Florida Keys.

Stillness seemed to pool from him, as clerks and secretaries and passing officials all slowed and stopped and stared, silence that lapped through the room like the incoming tide, until there was a clatter and crash of breaking mugs and a woman’s voice gasped, “Mr. Graves?”

And then it was like the ocean pouring in, as men and women rushed forward in a babble of voices, until they hit an invisible barrier - more than an arm’s length from this apparition, they found themselves unable to take one step farther. It was assuredly magic, at first, that held them back, but those closest found themselves leaning away as his eyes raked across them, his expression as flat and still as water beneath unmoving air. “Where is he?”

“Where is who?” a younger, brasher clerk in the front called out. “For that matter, where were you?”

Graves turned to stare at the young man. But the pause that followed seemed less intended to make the subject of his regard squirm, than a deliberate consideration of what words to say. “An island.”

“An island?” the man echoed, loud and disbelieving. “Where?”

Graves’ brow tensed as his gaze strayed; losing interest. “Somewhere.” He stepped forward, and the crowd rippled, forced to stumble back an equal distance.

“No, wait, wait! We’ve all been looking for you for weeks, and all this time, you’ve just been laying back on some island somewhere, like on a vacation? What was even - “

Graves may have been slow with his words, but his actions were quick as thought. A glance over his shoulder, a flick of his fingers, and the young clerk’s next words escaped him as the loud bray of an ass.

The sound startled nearby Aurors into whipping out their wands, but before they could even be leveled, they were jerked out of their hands into Graves’ closed fist. There was an exclamation behind him, the flash of a pair of blasting hexes, and he swept his empty hand out from behind a wordless Protego and two voices cried out, falling back into the crowd, felled as cleanly as if by a sniper.

“Hold! _Hold, you idiots!”_ someone shouted with the lungs of a drill sergeant, and as the first panicked shrieks of the crowd died down, Graves let the captured wands drop like deadwood at his feet.

Hands empty, he stepped forward, and everyone retreated before him.

“Where is he?” he called out, voice echoing from MACUSA’s walls, building like the grumble of thunder over a rising sea. _“Where is Grindelwald?"_


End file.
